“Farming Inside Cities” – A Look Back After Two Decades

Farming Inside Cities: Entrepreneurial Urban Agriculture in the United States (2000) by Jerry Kaufman and Martin Bailkey, was one of three concurrent research studies on for-market urban agriculture as a viable reuse of vacant land in major US cities. It was commissioned by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and its Land Markets program director, Rosalind Greenstein. For Greenstein, the report was part of an effort to direct Lincoln Institute resources into formerly industrial cities. For Kaufman, it represented a late-career integration of his commitment to social justice, his interest in central city revitalization, and a new belief in food systems planning as a legitimate area of professional practice. Farming Inside Cities did advance a domestic urban agenda within the Lincoln Institute, and was welcomed by urban farmers and representatives of the then-new community food movement as an academic recognition of their actions as change agents. Today, the report’s practical nature, a result of Kaufman’s influence, and its description of the opportunities and challenges of urban agriculture still hold up. In its practicality, however, it does not make explicit the value of farming as a symbolic and often-effective vehicle for social equity and food justice in urban communities of color.